


Three Conversations

by PlagueSimulators



Category: Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Bad Warden, Emotional Abuse, Gen, I did not go into this thinking 'oh these two are going to hurt each other'. unfortunately., Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Suicidal Thoughts, character death is for riordan, it's offscreen but rip buddy, the implied stuff is regarding both of their backstories not @ each other, we do not go into their decisions mostly but. they're bad.
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-10 16:54:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,430
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28490475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PlagueSimulators/pseuds/PlagueSimulators
Summary: “It only takes two facing mirrors to build a labyrinth.”― Jorge Luis BorgesWhatever you are looking for in someone, if you want it badly enough, you will find it.
Relationships: Loghain Mac Tir & Warden
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	1. i. Denerim, After the Landsmeet

The best way to regain strength after the Joining is by moving. So the older Warden claimed, and Loghain cannot refuse a chance to not think. Much as everything hurts.

Everything hurts. He feels a young man again. If he thinks too hard on what that was like, it hurts worse, and so: they are in a courtyard, bashing bruises into each other. Loghain doubts Riordan needs a demonstration of his full ability- he was at the Landsmeet. So instead this is a test of fortitude, and if he takes one hit that would be killing, he keeps going until the next, and the next, not dying.

He might even enjoy it if Riordan didn't keep wincing at his own mock strikes. The reminders of his mistakes are getting repetitive.

Fittingly, that is when the Commander appears out of the twilight murk, an assessing gleam in his dark eyes.

Riordan pauses, and lowers his bound sword. Breathing too hard, harder than Loghain. "The meeting is over?"

Nur grins crookedly. "The meat of it." Further satisfaction at her wordplay. Riordan seems unphased, but not annoyed. "The Queen was in the middle of a fray with Eamon when I left. I'm sure they'll wear each other out, and him sooner than later. He still seems unused to disappointment." His smile is like the Frostbacks. Loghain snorts in agreement.

Riordan looked at the Commander with a strange sort of softness. Loghain chewed over the expression until memory made it familiar: Rowan and Maric, looking at him after the wedding. Looking like they wanted to cross the room until he was forced to leave it, be driven to Gwaren by it, not return until Anora was a shield at his side, to bite and snap at Maric until his king learned to play his part. Pity. Riordan looked at Nur with Pity.

Loghain did not wonder now at how the Warden frowned back. The Warden looked at Loghain instead. "Well. You continue to be not dead."

Loghain arched an eyebrow, and then sketched an arch bow. His balance was back, thank the Maker. His head still wanted to crack open like a fallen rock, but beggars cannot be choosers apparently with regards to the Joining. "I am sorry to disappoint."

The Warden grimaced, and made a quick batting motion with his hand. "You're neither. We set off at dawn." His eyes flicked up to the smeared sky. "As much as dawn can come."

Riordan's shoulders relaxed, and he nodded. "We'll be ready."

"You'll get ready by sleeping. Go to bed, Riordan. The politicking's done for the day. I don't need you looking over my shoulder." The Commander's voice was shredded between sharp and soft. Riordan looked neither hurt nor confused. Just nodded again, and passed Nur by, his hand on his shoulder in brief comfort.

When the Warden looked back at Loghain it was with little of anything. He stood between Loghain and the gate, and Riordan. It was not his first time being left to fend for himself. It was his first chance at a proper explanation, however.

Loghain scowled at the Warden's shoulder, then up to his eyes. "You have complicated your position by sparing my life." It was not what he would have done, he wanted to say, but then he was not sure he wanted to draw parallels between them. Already he regretted the comparison he made to Maric. Strength was not the right word.

Nur examined him with a detached sort of interest. It reminded him of the foxes that appeared whenever he traveled without a dog. Like they knew when was safe to pester his camp. "It would have been easier, wouldn't it?"

Loghain didn't grace that with a reply. He didn't move, either, legs set and locked as if preparing for an inevitable ax blow, arms crossed. The chevalier plate made him a standing stone.

Nur smiled thinly at his silence. Something shifted behind his face. Maybe he knew it, as he immediately looked back at the gate instead. "You are a fool, and almost doomed Ferelden with your foolishness. The rest of Thedas with it, but you didn't think about that, did you?"

He grit his teeth, but did not yield by lashing out. To expectation, to his reputation, little as it had come to serve him. "And you suffer fools," he feigned to muse. The Warden snorted, and looked between him and the ground.

"According to Morrigan." He said this last in an undertone, with no small amount of guilt, but no smaller amount of bile. Loghain did not think it was directed at the witch.

He thought of the Warden's lieutenant- previous lieutenant, he reminded himself with a grimace. As much Maric's son as Cailan, and as little prepared for reality as his brother. "So long as you know when to draw the line."

Nur's lips twisted, and he met Loghain's eyes. Stopped. Tilted his head. "Do you want me to tell you how I forgive you?"

He scoffed in reply. "Forgive me, ser," he hissed the word with as much venom as he was allowed- and he was allowed all of it, now- "but I have not mistaken you for a Revered Mother. I will go to your Orlesian if you insist I try."

The Warden laughed, and Loghain shifted away from the honest amusement of it. Nur caught himself, and smiled back at him, half-mocking, half-interested. A fox was too small an animal for the comparison. "Don't be so pessimistic. You'd find more in common with Lelianna than you think. At this point she probably agrees with your assessment of me." He said this as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

Loghain stared back. The Warden smiled some more, and looked up at the wall. "Do you want me to tell you how it would be a waste of a general, a swordarm?"  
"The former is in question as to its competency."

Nur grinned at him wolfishly. Hummed in agreement.

Loghain worked over the lead his tongue had become. More than anything he wanted away, out of the sight of the Warden, away from his eyes that looked out with all the confidence of those behind a mask. All the emptiness of a mirror. But this was his Commander now. He was a Grey Warden now. And before he was sent to his death, he wanted to know.

"Anora will make a good queen."

He looked up to see the mask fallen. What was left, Nur's knit brow, his frown at the Blight-hazed sky. He glanced down at Loghain, and amended, "has been a good queen. You would agree?"

Loghain snorted. "Anora's competency is one of the few things I would stake my life on. Doubtless she has had more than a small part to play in averting my- Ferelden's destruction. Would have had more, maybe even secured your aid, before, if not," he swallowed the end, and stared gloomily at the Warden, daring a direct order to speak his mind.

He knows how he would treat himself. And while he does not like it, he is growing more and more confident that they are not dissimilar.

Nur is watching him with an empty face and eyes full of something again he cannot place. Thank the Maker, not pity, and maybe that is all he should care about. Hate he can stomach. Disappointment? He would get down on his knees and beg for the sword.

The Warden is looking at him like he knows this. Or maybe that is imagined, like so much of everything else Loghain fears lately. But he wasn't wrong to think the Wardens dangerous, was he?

Maybe if the others had lived. Maybe he killed the wrong one.

He briefly worries he has taken too long to respond, but no. It's Nur's turn, and he is not admitting more than he already has about his own mistakes. But this, he can offer. "Anora would have held to her promise. If she made such a promise. From how she speaks with you," and looks at you, which may be the grimmest liquor to swallow, "She holds you an ally. And she is not fool enough to sacrifice an alliance over sentimentality."

She shouldn't. If she did he could not blame her, but he has been of increasingly little use to her, and she must see that.

For a moment Nur looks through him, and Loghain is struck hard again by the lack of a mask. Nur is not an Orlesian name, comes the sudden thought. Step on it. Stomp it to death. The Warden speaks again, and his voice is low like the Archdemon's in his head.

"No child should have to witness their parent's execution."

Loghain stares at him. Nur frowns at his chest, eyes flickering up briefly to gage his expression, and turns away. "Last I left her she was in the war room. I imagine at this point Eamon has finally tucked his tail between his legs and slunk off to bed." The bitter humor is flat over his face. The Warden leaves without a dismissal or an order.

For a moment watching his back depart Loghain thinks he could be any one of his men. It is a preferable thought, it is a necessary thought. He cannot keep charting landmasses that don't exist.

He looks up at the sky as if it might provide some navigation. The Blight hangs low as an ax. He lowers his eyes, and goes to find his daughter.


	2. ii. Redcliffe, During the Siege

Riordan sat, dagger in one hand, cloth in the other, polish in the jar beside his knee. Loghain looked for a place to lean; the room was more crate than wall, and so he was forced to sit. As if they were friends.

It is very strange to be having this conversation in reverse. He and Anora have had it so many times. It reminds him of his father, and that is not a reminder he wants to be having today. Not in the hold of Redcliffe, waiting for the horde to break on its walls, or break them.

"If I die, you will be one of the only two Wardens left in Ferelden."

Loghain purses his lips and resists the urge to point out the unlikelihood of that 'if'. Not that he doesn't believe in chance, or luck. But he believes much more strongly in his own ability. Still. Pride is the last thing to go. No, obligation is, and that is the last thing he has to give.

Riordan ran the polishing cloth over the flat of the blade, and then up to the guard. "I knew Nur's former superior."

Loghain resisted the urge to roll his eyes. The Wardens spoke as indirectly as any noble. "Yes, I've heard a great deal of Duncan."

The older Warden grimaces, a flicker of pain crossing his eyes. He reassembles quickly enough. "Before Duncan. But he was one of our best recruiters." He dug his nail and the cloth with it into a groove. "Weisshaupt knows- knew that well enough. He could see the value in anyone."

It would be a fond tone if it weren't so heavy. Loghain finds himself looking away. "Yes, your Commander seems to have learned that lesson admirably."

"I outrank her." Riordan sounded amused, of all things. Loghain pursed his lips over the pronoun. The Warden must have caught his beetled brow. "Oh. Both. She ... presents most often as a man among nobility, I have noticed."

Loghain considers Eamon's disdain for Anora, and coughs a laugh. "That would suit her purposes well, yes."

Riordan's mouth twists again, but he does not quite voice whatever he is thinking of. He looks down instead at the dagger, and continues. "She did not learn pragmatism from Duncan. As skilled a teacher he is of it."

Loghain waits, and after a halting pause, Riordan says 'was' more quietly.

Loghain does not see why the Warden does not take aim and fire with his grief. Maker knows the boy did with zeal. But maybe some things are below senior Wardens. Maybe the Taint eats anger, he thinks with a nauseated sort of humor. Maybe Riordan isn't even grieving like an animal. Maybe-

"There are worse ways to join the Wardens than as you did." Riordan's voice is even as a plucked lute, for all its lingering dungeon rasp.

Loghain whips his head to stare at him in disbelief. "Oh, yes?"

Damn him, the man seems surprised by his reaction. Still not angry. Just observing him as if formulating battle plans based on his recruit's inexhaustible bile. Loghain grinds his teeth, and forces his shoulders down.

Riordan looks at him with approval, and Loghain hates it, he is older than this man, he has seen more of the world, forged more men into soldiers than this Warden could have. But this is where he is, so he must make the most of it.

"Why do you think she spared you?"

If he thinks of any individual part, that is the worst part. The way they laughed. The way they held his head, all of him, up by the hair, until he almost couldn't see for tears. They way they took turns. The way she told him not to-

If he thinks of any part of it, he cannot think of anything else. Everything else has faded. If the Taint eats him, that will be the last to go.

"Loghain?" Riordan's voice is naked with concern, and Loghain holds up a hand to stop the man from getting to his feet. Can only keep his hand up, a moment, without words.

"... She told me."

They sit a moment more in silence. Loghain focuses on his breathing. The damned headache is back. Riordan doesn't look convinced, or else he looks like he knows more than he is willing to say. Loghain doesn't care anymore.

"Her superior followed the Calling a few years ago. Our contact with the Legion is intermittent enough that no one could ever prove he didn't make it down to the Deep Roads."

Loghain wishes the man would stop talking. Especially about Nur. Especially in this round-about manner. His obstinate silence only seems to steel something in the Warden. Riordan wipes the blade clean once more, and returns it to its sheath.

"Nur was the one to escort him to the upper tunnels. And he went willingly." He buckles the dagger to his belt, and folds his hands in his lap. The skin is red and shiny where his fingernails used to be.

"More willingly than you."

Loghain coughs a laugh at that. He taps his finger on his knee, mulling over the information. "Is this a warning, or a set of instructions?" He doesn't mind the possibility of offending this man. One of them will be dead soon enough, most likely. Let Riordan think him unwilling, it won't matter in the end.

Riordan just looks mournful, his pale face drawn in the Blighted light. "If I can't tell her what to do, I can hardly hope I can tell you."

Loghain considers this. "She listened to you before. To the extent of banishing her brother-in-arms."

"Just brother, I think." The man is exhausted. Loghain has returned to not wanting to be in this conversation. He considers proving Riordan right by walking out of here.

But. "If you are afraid of something, you will serve neither of us by keeping it to yourself. Or." He bites his tongue. "Not trusting your fear with anyone else."

It's a vital organ that he's just bared to the Warden. There's a grim relief in just waiting for the other man to puncture it, set out on a plate as Loghain has presented it. Instead Riordan smiles at him, and for a moment Loghain considers that inconvenient truths wear wan faces.

Riordan tilts his head back to rest against the stone. "... I am not afraid of Nur. Whatever she feels for the Order, she has never sought to abandon our cause, or undermine it. She is a very different person from the one I parted ways with in Orlais." He pauses, and considers the sky outside. "I don't think she cares for politics beyond how it fights and prevents a Blight. I don't think she would betray us." He exhales slowly, and is just a soldier facing one battle too many. "I am afraid of others betraying her."

Loghain thinks about the way the Crow looks at the Warden. The way the Sister will not look at the Warden. He thinks about Nur's shoulders stiff and rigid with not turning to watch Alistair storm away.  
"If you think I can offer her advice on how not to alienate her own allies, you may be half in the Archdemon's thrall already."

Riordan laughs, and shakes his head. He does not say anything more, simply looking out at the sky as if praying for blue. Loghain wants to push him, but then, he already has. Maybe they have already reached the point of the conversation already.


	3. iii. Denerim, After the Battle

Impossible as it seemed, they are running out of bodies to burn.

The crops that were planted in spring rotted in the ground. If they have time to plant again, that will be what some would call a blessing of the Maker. Loghain thinks it more likely to be a matter of luck, and of letting parts of Denerim stay a wreck. This would be an easy thing to agree on, save for the fact of the nobility’s estates being part of that wreck.

He mulishly wishes the Archdemon had been more selective. The beast was as intransigent as the Warden Commander.

Still, they are running out of bodies to burn, and Anora sits on the throne, and Ferelden retains some military, and all of Ferelden is celebrating. If their enemies see their weakness, they will find a country at least unified by its victory.

They won’t see his weakness. He isn’t Ferelden anymore. Thinking about it opens up a gulf beneath his feet, and now the Archdemon is dead, he can’t not think about it. He doesn’t have a way out.

He reaches for the part of him that wants a way out, and he finds it smaller and smaller. Inconvenient, that.

Someone tugs on the back of his shirt, and he drops the end of a cracked beam to spin on his heel. Nur grins back at him, his gashed lips close to splitting open again.

He aborts his snarl at the sight. “Those stitches won’t hold if you keep smiling like that.”

The Warden’s eyebrows lift, and he tilts back his head in a barking laugh. Soldiers and peasants alike look up from their grim toil to stare. “Then I’ll be smiling all the time. Maker. No wonder Anora keeps such a stern face.”

Loghain thins his lips. The Commander refuses to quell his mirth. “Did you want something from me, Commander?” He’d remind them, pointedly, that he has work to do. But then someone might say no, they don’t want his help. And it is not as though the Warden has not been lending her fair share. He’s not sure he’s seen her stop since she woke up after the battle.

Nur hums mildly to himself, and taps Loghain’s shoulder again. He’s not stoic enough to not bat his hand away. The younger man smirks at him, and jerks his head behind him, before turning and walking back up the ruined street.

Loghain inhales, and exhales. Rolls his shoulders as if to shrug off the stares, and follows his Commander.

They stop in a main square, under a statue of The Redeemer. Maric’s outstretched sword arm has fallen and shattered in the still fountain pool. Someone has festooned him with flowers, though. Loghain has to look down at Nur.

Who is also looking up, with more closed a face than Loghain has seen on her since the Archdemon’s head came off. She looks at him after a moment, and smiles, tucking whatever she thinks back behind the smile. Taps the pommel of her sword. “Sten’s asked me to leave with him.”

Loghain’s head becomes a racket of suppositions. He rasps out, “for?”

Nur huffs through her nose, still smiling. “Par Vollen. His duty is to report to the Arishok on what, in fact, the Blight is.” She rubs her palm over the pommel harder, and nods to herself. “The Qun doesn’t have the Grey Wardens. Darkspawn can’t swim, but. It won’t keep them safe forever. And since the Qun’s as eager as Orlais to expand,” she cracks a grin, the stitches taut again, “they’ll need to learn of the Wardens’ famous neutrality.”

He won’t deign that joke with a scoff. “That does make sense.” He crosses his arms, and frowns hard at her. “For any Warden who isn’t one of two in a nation recovering from a Blight.”

He doesn’t seem surprised. The Commander nods again. “I could hardly leave you in charge.” Loghain begins to smile nastily, before she adds, “I know some soldiers willing to risk the gibbet for your head.”

Loghain blinks, and looks between her shoulder and her face. “That and my recent record with regards to the Wardens.”

“You don’t have to love, trust, or even like something to serve it well.” Nur’s voice is cool and even as a cold current in a sea swell. Her face is as open as that sea when he looks up at her, and she looks back without flinching.

For a moment. She looks up at the statue, and crooks a wry smile that is more a baring of teeth. “And Alistair’s still a coward, so, yes, it is just you and me.”

“Did you think he would change his mind?” He tries for dry but it comes out as even as her own voice. She snorts, and shakes her head. He can see enough of her face, however.

“I hoped. I’ve hoped for enough stupid, reckless things this year, haven’t I? But I got what mattered. He can plunge into-” His voice cracked, and it was with a thin hiss of inhaled breath he turned away from Loghain to look out to sea. “Whatever it is he wants. We can’t all be so fucking selfish.” His voice grinds into the scorched square’s stones.

If Riordan were here, he would say something helpful. Politic. Or Anora, or that Crow of her’s. Except no, he left after the battle, with the rest of them.

A dull, blank space in his head. The rest of them. It is him and the Qunari, and the mabari, which is usually with the Qunari. Who will likely leave with the Qunari.

He steps forward, and places his hand on her shoulder, as if she were Cauthrien, as if she were Anora, as if she were Maric or Rowan or his father or someone else who trusted him, once. “No, we cannot be.”

The Commander spits a laugh, and glares at him. Her eyes are shot red, though he hasn’t seen her cry. Not ever. Anora stopped letting him see after she became Queen.

He wonders when the Warden stopped. He doesn’t need to wonder long.

“It’s not the same.”

“Ferelden needs you. Yes, it is.”  
“Hang Ferelden, you’ve all tried to kill me. Thedas needs me. You wanted to save Ferelden, I can give you your turn, Mac Tir.” He stepped back out of reach, eyes never leaving his face. As if he might strike him, and Loghain feels faintly sick with how the Tainted blood between them snaps and hisses at this discord.

It’s wearily he replies, “I told you what I wanted, and you refused. Don’t feign generosity now that the witch has left you, too.”

For a brief moment he considers the fact that Nur might kill him. He’s seen men get like this. He’s seen himself like this. He’s been spoken to like how he is speaking to Nur now, and if he were Nur he would kill him. But Nur was the one who patronized him first.

“You’ve made your bed. You’ve accepted this duty. If you didn’t want me to argue with you, you would have let me deal the final blow, and you certainly wouldn’t be here talking with me right now. You’ve already admitted you can’t leave me in charge.” He pauses, and adds, more slowly, knowing it is a low blow but anything is worth it in this fight, “The Qunari is following his duty. You have your own.”

The Warden stares at him like the Archdemon itself. Or a mirror, from how blank his eyes have turned, no matter how hot the unshed tears. He looks at The Redeemer, up, at the pale blue sky. “Duncan fucked up.”

Loghain wants to say, ‘by dying?’, but he doesn’t truly want to be killed anymore. He can admit that to himself. Since he’s needed. He waits for Nur to continue.

The Commander stares at the water, grey and brown with ash. Not even insects could lay their eggs in the brack. “There are two kinds of fathers. The kind who raise children, and the kind who raise soldiers.” His lips twist up in a mime of a smile. “Duncan couldn’t make up his mind about which to be. He didn’t have to face the consequences, but Ali did. I sure as fuck did.” He exhales with a shudder. Looks up at Loghain’s face, reading it like the weather. Seems to come to a conclusion.

He reaches inside his outer tunic, and pulls out a letter. “Somebody needs to stay in Ferelden. And somebody needs to report back to Orlais and tell Clarel what has happened.” He smiles thin like a stiletto. “You see my conundrum.”

Loghain stares at the letter. The seal has been broken. He can see the smooth cursive of an Orlesian noble’s hand under Nur’s thumb. “I. Cannot stay.” He’s needed. He can’t die. He can’t.

Nur is staring at him like a starving wolf at a meal. “No, you can’t. I’d thought to burn the letter,” she offers as if it were the simplest thing, “buy a little time. But since we each have our duties to follow.”

Loghain feels the cold point of her longsword at his neck, already wet with his blood. The sky opened up after the Blight, and now it opens further, ready to swallow him as he falls up, up. “Loghain. We cannot be selfish.”

The first returning gulls cry far overhead.

**Author's Note:**

> This timeline is not my canon timeline. I got stuck thinking about it and had enough feelings to write it. Sorry.


End file.
